California seeks extradition of Cowichan Valley man

A resident of the Cowichan Valley is facing extradition to California to answer to charges of murder and kidnapping in a cold-case file.

Anthony Michael Kubica, 61, recently made a court appearance in Victoria in connection with the extradition request made by the Riverside County District Attorney’s office, and is expected to make a second court appearance in January.

A publication ban on the information that was revealed in the court appearance has been issued.

Kubica is wanted for the murder and kidnapping of Palm Springs resident Marie Darling, a 78-year-old wealthy widow who disappeared from her home 27 years ago.

According to the declaration in support of an arrest warrant that was filed with the Superior Court of California, County of Riverside, Darling’s body was later found by hikers by the side of a highway in a sleeping bag with her feet wrapped in duct tape.

An autopsy performed on the body found the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head.

More than $184,000 was transferred out of Darling’s Swiss bank account to an account in Anguilla that Kubica, who lived and operated a company in Palm Springs at the time, had allegedly opened around the same time the body was found.

Kubica and his wife, whom the court documents refer to as CJ, were suspects early in the investigation but the trail went cold.

But a cold-case investigator is claiming that since then, he discovered that Kubica’s wife was Darling’s financial advisor, even though she’d denied knowing Darling during the original investigation. Kubica’s wife is now deceased.

Kubica was recently in the local news due to his connections with a development company that was testing the aquifer systems on McLean Road, near Lake Cowichan, in preparation for a possible housing development in the area.